A Risk Even for the Majority

Asking whether religious freedom is under threat implies that we know what religious freedom is. Religious freedom has multiple histories and is understood differently in different times and places. For example, for some today, religious freedom connotes the possibility of an individual to believe or not as she chooses and to act consistently with that belief within the bounds of law. For others, religious freedom implies the right of religious communities to a degree of autonomy or self-governance. A few would argue that religious freedom demands withdrawal and separation from a larger society so as to enable a common way of life. Still others would say that the priority today should be religious coexistence, rather than freedom; that freedom is a misguided goal, whether for individuals or communities, the appropriate goal being to live with difference and without conflict. And of course, to enforce any version of religious freedom also requires a determination as to what counts as religion.

Throughout American history, some groups and individuals have always been disadvantaged, either legally or socially.

In the U.S. today, religion is highly diverse and vital. While they espouse a variety of views as to what such freedom entails, most Americans understand themselves to enjoy a degree of religious freedom unprecedented in the world. That understanding is rooted in the texts and myths of American exceptionalism, including those of the Constitution and the narratives of the settlement of North America, as well as the stories told by particular religious communities.

Throughout American history, however, various groups and individuals have always been disadvantaged, either formally or through social exclusion, because of their religious beliefs and practices. American Indians, Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and many others have suffered, and today suffer, religious discrimination and legal disability.

Over time, religious authority has, for most Americans across the religious spectrum, increasingly shifted from religious institutions and hierarchies to individuals and local communities. That shift has provoked concern from those institutions that their religious self-understandings will be supplanted. In American history it is the more democratic understanding of religion that has generally predominated, even while such an understanding has also excluded alternative religious ways of life. Powerful economic and social forces, including the politics of fear, shape the religious lives of all Americans, including those in the majority.